AMERICAN LITERATURE

AMERICAN LITERATURE VĂN HỌC MỸ AMERICAN LITERATURE Tác giả: LÊ THỊ THANH, Ph.D PREFACE The course American Literature is designed to represent major themes which run throughout American literary history and at the same time to suggest a way of understanding and interpreting that literature The course is intended for students whose reading skills are of an intermediate or advanced level of English and mainly for those classes studying literature of Department of English, Faculty of Foreign Languages, Ho chi minh City Open University It is expected that all the teachers feel free to select texts that are suitable for their teaching situation, reject others and supplement when necessary This course begins by providing the students with a general knowledge about basic techniques for literary comprehension and interpretation A brief introduction of American literature from its beginning to the modern period is then included by a survey of American literary history and introduction about literary friends It continues with a range of literary texts in roughly chronological study of American writers to help the student to develop a genuine sense of growth and continuity in the American mind from 1607 to the present time Each unit contains a text with biographical information, some questions for comprehension and interpretation The information accompanying the text aims to help the students to understand the text and can be used in a variety of circumstances such as individual preparation, group presentation or class discussion Lê Thị Thanh, Ph.D INTRODUCTION TO LITERATURE INTERPRETATION Literature needs creative readers with effective strategies for reading and interpretation Students of literature are expected to express their comprehension through literary analysis and interpretation, not by providing the facts or summarizing the text To develop your understanding a text, you need to adopt different strategies for stages of reading: Understanding and Responding Stage 1, Reading and Understanding, focuses on your initial reactions to what you read Through a variety of activities you will be encouraged to explore your possible understanding to a given text Stage 2, Analyzing and Interpreting, helps you understand the story’s meanings or significance of the text through various elements such as plot, setting, character, and point of view From learning how a story is composed through scenes and characters you can develop a deeper understanding of how language can be used both to create and to comprehend a story Some texts in this course may be easy to read; others may be hard Some will immediately provoke a reaction; others will take more thought and discussion The following strategies are designed to help you develop effective approaches to reading even the most difficult ones DEVELOPING READING AND UNDERSTANDING Before Reading You may be able to understand what you read better if you have some background knowledge before you begin reading The following suggestions may be helpful Read the title of the text It may give you a clue to the text’s focus Read the biographical information (“About the Author”) that precedes the story By reading some background on the author’s life and literary history, you may gain some insight into the author’s approach Knowing the date, original language, and country of origin of a work of fiction can help you understand it better Read any background information (“The Context of the Story”) because it may help you become aware of an unfamiliar concept that is crucial to an understanding of the text Look at the length of the story Knowledge of how long a text is can help you plan your reading time First Reading This is the time you enter the world of the text and you not need to understand every word or detail Try to feel what the author feels and to know what the characters experience Guidelines for First Reading Preview the text by reading the title, the biographical information about the author, and the discussion of the context of the text Read the text through once to grasp what is happening, without using a dictionary Subsequent Readings Because you are reading the short stories, poems, essays, extracts from novels to fulfill the demand of an academic course, American Literature, the way you ultimately read in this course will be different from the way you read purely for pleasure For example, in a second reading, you may read not from beginning to end but rather forwards and backwards, as you predict and remember what you have read before The details that you had not noticed in the first time may suddenly appear important The ideas that seemed to confirm your own beliefs or expectations may now seem to contradict them, and vice versa Although this reading process can be unsettling, it is a natural process that even the most advanced readers of literature experience Establishing a Goal for Reading To understand a text, you need to read it more than once and when you reread, you should try to establish a goal The following guidelines can give you an idea of ways to read for different purposes (1) If you are rereading in preparation for a class discussion of the reading you may want to underline or copy passages that you particularly like or that you find confusing so that you can bring them to the attention of the class (2) If you are rereading for the purpose of answering a question the instructor has posed about the text, you will want to reread the story in an attempt to find an answer (3) If you are rereading in preparation for writing an essay about the text, you will want to look for specific details that will help you develop the ideas Defining Unfamiliar Vocabulary Words Even at this stage, you not need to know the meaning of every word in a text As you reread, underline or in some other way make note of only words or expressions that seem to hold a key to comprehension: words you need to know to achieve a general understanding of die passages in which they occur Although a dictionary can be helpful in learning vocabulary, it cannot define all expressions, and the definitions you find may not apply to the reading passage Another way to approach unfamiliar vocabulary is to guess at the general meanings of words, using contextual clues Contexts will not always give you precise meanings, but they will often give you enough clues about the meaning to understand a passage Use a dictionary, or the Glossary, primarily in two circumstances: (1) when you are not satisfied with the meaning you have guessed from the context even after subsequent readings, or (2) when you are assigned to summarize or to analyze part or all of the text Guessing Meaning from Context Working in pairs or a small group, identify two or three words or expressions that you find challenging Following the guidelines for using contextual clues to guess at meaning, discuss those words to infer their meaning in the passages in which they occur Consult a dictionary or the Glossary to compare the meanings you have decided upon with the dictionary definitions Guidelines for Using Contextual Clues to Guess at Meaning Look at what precedes and follows the word or expression (for example, grammatical forms within the same sentence, other key words or expressions, important ideas, significant scenes, and so on) Try to determine whether the word has a positive or negative connotation Consider how the word fits into the whole text Annotating A second or third reading can only consist simply of reading the text again But you can achieve a closer reading by making brief notes as you read Making these notes, either in the margins of the text, within the text itself, or on a separate sheet of paper is known as annotating Annotating is a way to record your reactions to a text This process not only helps you focus on the reading task but also clarify the actions and meanings of the text Annotating can be practiced in many ways Each reader has an individual way of making notes You might write notes about each paragraph or about larger chunks You might write a brief word or whole sentences You might underline, highlight, circle, and /or write comments in a notebook.Guidelines for Annotating Express any emotions you feel in response to what you have just read, for example, pleasure, surprise, anger, confusion Recall personal associations with what is described in the text The literary journal will prepare you to write more formal essays because writing journal entries will give you regular practice in interpretation Furthermore, the entries will serve as a source of valid and appropriate approaches to literary works Participating in and Taking Notes on Class Discussions Although the guidelines are designed to focus on understanding through reading and writing, many have involved you in another productive reading strategies: talking This course aims to provide also opportunities for you to speak about what you have read By speaking and by listening to others, you can come to a deeper understanding of a story Like the processes of reading and writing, the act of conversation itself can generate ideas There are numerous opportunities that will enable you to participate in discussions ^ with your classmates and sharing what you have written about the text in your reading log can be a way to introduce your ideas into the class discussions By sharing ideas, you can become actively engaged in the process of understanding literature To remember the significant ideas that emerge from class discussions is a good way to improve your comprehension Suggestions for Reading and Understanding Preview the text by reading the title, the biographical information, and the discussion of the context of the text Read the text through once to grasp what is happening, without using a dictionary of the Glossary Reread and annotate the text - Identify any unfamiliar vocabulary words; try to guess the meaning from the context _ Write brief clarifying notes Write in your reading log to explore your initial reactions to the text Discuss your responses with classmate DEVELOPING ANALYZING AND INTERPRETING In this stage, the focus is on analysis and interpretation Analysis is the process of breaking down something into its parts to examine the parts closely Interpretation is the process of piecing the parts together to discover a pattern that reveals the text’s meanings or significance Examining Elements Within a Story The parts of a story that you can examine are elements that exist within the story: plot, setting, character, point of view, imagery, symbolism, tone, irony, speech, structure, and foreshadowing Each element provides clues to meaning and can help you interpret a story Plot Plot is a series of events and thoughts arranged to reveal their dramatic and emotional significance Plot is not just a sequence of chronological events Rather, plot implies that there is a meaningful relationship among the events Conflict Plot is characterized by a conflict: a struggle between two or more opposing forces The conflict may be internal (person vs self) or external (person vs person; person vs nature; person vs society; or person vs fate) A story may have more than one conflict Plot Summary To summarize a plot, you need to determine what you believe are the key events or happenings in the story and to identify the conflict(s) Ask questions such as these: What is happening? What is the main conflict? Is the conflict resolved (brought to a conclusion)? In a plot summary, there are primarily four important features: It should be brief Try to summarize the plot in a few sentences, or in only one or two sentences It should be accurate Use the facts as they are presented in the story It should contain the most important details Your goal is to tell what is happening in the story, to identify what you perceive to be the main conflict a Select what you think are the most significant details b Decide what you are going to include in your summary and what you are going to leave out c Present the details in the order in which they occur in the story or in another logical order d Focus on the facts and as little interpretation as possible It should be primarily in your own words Retell the story using your own words Of course, some of the original words of the story must remain, such as the names of people and places But you can replace many of the words from the original text Use one of these strategies, or another strategy that you find productive, to find your own words: a After reading the story, put it aside and retell the story from the memory b After reading, take notes on the story Then put the story aside and retell the story from the notes Setting Setting refers to the place, time, social environment, and physical environment of a story Place The setting may include details that indicate the geographical location of the story, such as the country or city in which the story takes place, or they may reveal whether the story takes place in a large city or a small village The details may show whether the story takes indoors or outdoors, or both Time The length of time during which the action occurs is a feature of the setting, this X may span several years or months or only an hour Details of the setting may reveal the time of day, not only through actual clock time but also through descriptions of light, darkness, and shadows Details of the setting may reveal time of year, through references to the seasons The period of history, in which the action occurs, may also be revealed Social Environment Not all stories include references to social environment, but when they do, such references may include details about the manners, customs, rules and moral codes of a society Details may also reveal socioeconomic status or class level Physical Environment Details of the setting reveal the physical environment in which the story takes place Such concrete details may include references to or descriptions of objects, clothing, nature, buildings, rooms, weather, sounds, smells, and so on These physical details often indicate the emotional state of the characters or the relationship between characters Examining the setting of a story Working in a small group or with the whole class, discuss answers to the questions: Where does the story take place? When? How long does it take for the action to occur? Which details reveal the society’s manners, customs, rules, moral codes, and/or the socioeconomic level of the characters? Which concrete details reveal a character’s emotional state and/or the relationship between the characters? Characters Characters are the people in stories, or animals or objects that have human traits in stories The term character refers to people’s outward appearance and behavior and also to their inner emotional, intellectual and moral qualities Writers of fiction rarely, if ever, directly tell readers what a character is like Instead, writers suggest what a character is like, relying on indirect methods of characterization These indirect methods, summarized below, require readers to interpret clues to identify character traits and thus understand motivation for or causes of behavior By piecing together these clues, readers can form a picture of the whole character Outer and Inner Characters Character is revealed in a story by how a person is described; by what a person does, says, and thinks; by what others in the story say and think about the person; and by how others in the story react to the person Character is also revealed by the choices the person makes and the changes the person undergoes as Sir Walter Scott and Charles Dickens, along with American authors But at least the foreign authors had already been paid by their original publishers and were already well known Americans such as James Fenimore Cooper not only failed to receive adequate payment, but they had to suffer seeing their works pirated under their noses Cooper's first successful book, The Spy (1821), was pirated by four different printers within a month of its appearance Ironically, the copyright law of 1790, which allowed pirating, was nationalistic in intent Drafted by Noah Webster, the great lexicographer who later compiled an American dictionary, the law protected only the work of American authors; it was felt that English writers should look out for themselves Bad as the law was, none of the early publishers were willing to have it changed because it proved profitable for them Piracy starved the first generation of revolutionary American writers; not surprisingly, the generation after them produced even less work of merit The high point of piracy, in 1815, corresponds with the low point of American writing Nevertheless, the cheap and plentiful supply of pirated foreign books and classics in the first 50 years of the new country did educate Americans, including the first great writers, who began to make their appearance around 1825 THE ROMANTIC PERIOD, 1820-1860: ESSAYISTS AND POETS The Romantic movement, which originated in Germany but quickly spread to England, France, and beyond, reached America around the year 1820, some 20 years after William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge had revolutionized English poetry by publishing Lyrical Ballads In America as in Europe, fresh new vision electrified artistic and intellectual circles Yet there was an important difference: Romanticism in America coincided with the period of national expansion and the discovery of a distinctive American voice The solidification of a national identity and the surging idealism and passion of Romanticism nurtured the masterpieces of "the American Renaissance." Romantic ideas centered around art as inspiration, the spiritual and aesthetic dimension of nature, and metaphors of organic growth Art, rather than science, Romantics argued, could best express universal truth The Romantics underscored the importance of expressive art for the individual and society In his essay "The Poet" (1844), Raph Waldo Emerson, perhaps the most influential writer of the Romantic era, asserts: For all men live by truth, and stand in need of expression In love, in art, in avarice, in politics, in labor, in games, we study to utter our painful secret The man is only half himself, the other half is his expression The development of the self became a major theme; self- awareness a primary method If, according to Romantic theory, self and nature were one, selfawareness was not a selfish dead end but a mode of knowledge opening up the universe If one's self were one with all humanity, then the individual had a moral duty to reform social inequalities and relieve human suffering The idea of "self" which suggested selfishness to earlier generations - was redefined New compound words with positive meanings emerged: "self-realization," "selfexpression," "self-reliance." As the unique, subjective self became important, so did the realm of psychology Exceptional artistic effects and techniques were developed to evoke heightened psychological states The "sublime" - an effect of beauty in grandeur (for example, a view from a mountaintop) - produced feelings of awe, reverence, vastness, and a power beyond human comprehension Romanticism was affirmative and appropriate for most American poets and creative essayists America's vast mountains, deserts, and tropics embodied the sublime The Romantic spirit seemed particularly suited to American democracy: It stressed individualism, affirmed the value of the common person, and looked to the inspired imagination for its aesthetic and ethical values Certainly the New England Transcendentalists - Ralph Waldo Emerson, Herry David Thoreau, and their associates - were inspired to a new optimistic affirmation by the Romantic movement In New England, Romanticism fell upon fertile soil Transcendentalism The Transcendentaỉist movement was a reaction against 18th century rationalism and a manifestation of the general humanitarian trend of 19th century thought The movement was based on a fundamental belief in the unity of the world and God The soul of each individual was thought to be identical with the world - a microcosm of the world itself The doctrine of self-reliance and individualism developed through the belief in the identification of the individual soul with God Transcendentalism was Ultimately connected with Concord, a small New England village 32 kilometers west of Boston Concord was the first inland settlement of the original Massachusetts Bay Colony Surrounded by forest, it was and remains a peaceful town close enough to Boston's lectures, bookstores, and colleges to be intensely cultivated, but far enough away to be serene Concord was the site of the first battle of the American Revolution, and Ralph Waldo Emersons poem commemorating the battle, "Concord Hymn/' has one of the most famous opening stanzas in American literature: By the rude bridge that arched the flood Their flag to April's breeze unfurled, Here once the embattled farmers stood And fired the shot heard round the world Concord was the first rural artist's colony, and the first place to offer a spiritual and cultural alternative to American materialism It was a place of highminded conversation and simple living (Emerson and Henry David Thoreau both had vegetable gardens) Emerson, who moved to Concord in 1834, and Thoreau are most closely associated with the town, but the locale also attracted the novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne, the feminist writer Margaret Fuller, the educator (and father of novelist Louisa May Alcott) Bronson Alcott, and the poet William Ellery Charming The Transcendental Club was loosely organized in 1836 and included, at various times, Emerson, Thoreau, Fuller, Charming, Bronson Alcott, Orestes Brownson (a leading minister), Theodore Parker (abolitionist and minister), and others The Transcendentalists published a quarterly magazine, The Dial, which lasted four years and was first edited by Margaret Fuaer and later by Emerson Reform efforts engaged them as well as literature A number of Transcendentalists were abolitionists, and some were involved in experimental utopian communities such as nearby Brook Farm (described in Hawthorne's The Blithedale Romance) and Fruitlands Unlike many European groups, the Transcend entalists never issued a manifesto They insisted on individual differences - on the unique viewpoint of the individual American Transcendental Romantics pushed radical individualism to the extreme American writers often saw themselves as lonely explorers outside society and convention The American hero - like Herman Melville's Captain Ahab, or Mark Twains Huck Finn, or Edgar Allan Poe's Arthur Gordon Pym typically faced risk, or even certain destruction, in the pursuit of metaphysical self-discovery For the Romantic American writer, nothing was a given Literary and social conventions, far from being helpful, were dangerous There was tremendous pressure to discover an authentic literary form, content, and voice all at the same time It is clear from the many masterpieces produced in the three decades before the U.S Civil War (1861-65) that American writers rose to the challenge The Brahmin Poets In their time, the Boston Brahmins (as the patrician, Harvard-educated class came to be called) supplied the most respected and genuinely cultivated literary arbiters of the United States Their lives fitted a pleasant pattern of wealth and leisure directed by the strong New England work ethic and respect for learning In an earlier Puritan age, the Boston Brahmins would have been ministers; in the 19th century, they became professors, often at Harvard Late in life they sometimes became ambassadors or received honorary degrees from European institutions Most of them travelled or were educated in Europe: They were familiar with the ideas and books of Britain, Germany, and France, and often Italy and Spain Upper class in background but democratic in sympathy, the Brahmin poets carried their genteel, European-oriented views to every section of the United States, through public lectures at the 3,000 lyceums (centers for public lectures) and in the pages of two influential Boston magazines, the North American Review and the Atlantic Monthly The writings of the Brahmin poets fused American and European traditions and sought to create a continuity of shared Atlantic experience These scholarpoets attempted to educate and elevate the general populace by introducing a European dimension to American literature Ironically, their overall effect was conservative By insisting on European things and forms, they retarded the growth of a distinctive American consciousness Well-meaning men, their conservative backgrounds blinded them to the daring innovativeness of Thoreau, Whitman (whom they refused to meet socially), and Edgar Allan Poe (whom even Emerson regarded as the "jingle man") They were pillars of what was called the "genteel tradition" that three generations of American realists had to battle Partly because of their benign but bland influence, it was almost 100 years before the distinctive American genius of Whitman, Melville, Thoreau, and Poe was generally recognized in the United States THE RISE OF REALISM, 1860-1914 The U.S Civil War (1861-1865) between the industrial North and the agricultural, slave-owning South was a watershed in American history The innocent optimism of the young democratic nation gave way, after the war, to a period of exhaustion American idealism remained but was rechanneled Before the war, idealists championed human rights, especially the abolition of slavey; after the war, Americans increasingly idealized progress and the self-made man This was the era of the millionaire manufacturer and the speculator, when Darwinian evolution and the "survival of the fittest" seemed to sanction the sometimes unethical methods of the successful business tycoon Business boomed after the war War production had boosted industry in the North and given it prestige and political clout It also gave industrial leaders valuable experience in the management of men and machines The enormous natural resources - iron, coal, oil, gold, and silver - of the American land benefitted business The new intercontinental rail system, inaugurated in 1869, and the transcontinental telegraph, which began operating in 1861, gave industry access to materials, markets, and communications The constant influx of immigrants provided a seemingly endless supply of inexpensive labor as well Over 23 million foreigners - German, Scandinavian, and Irish in the early years, and increasingly Central and Southern Europeans thereafter - flowed into the United States between 1860 and 1910 Chinese, Japanese, and Filipino contract laborers were imported by Hawaiian plantation owners, railroad companies, and other American business interests on the West Coast In I860, most Americans lived on farms or in small villages, but by 1919 half of the population was concentrated in about 12 cities Problems of urbanization and industrialization appeared: poor and overcrowded housing, unsanitary conditions, low pay (called "wage slavery"), difficult working conditions, and inadequate restraints on business Labor unions grew, and strikes brought the plight of working people to national awareness Farmers, too, saw themselves struggling against the "money interests" of the East, the socalled robber barons like J.P Morgan and John D Rockefeller Their eastern banks tightly controlled mortgages and credit so vital to western development and agriculture, while railroad companies charged high prices to transport farm products to the cities The farmer gradually became an object of ridicule, lampooned as an unsophisticated "hick" or "rube." The ideal American of the post-Civil War period became the millionaire In I860, there were fewer than 100 millionaires; by 1875, there were more than 1,000 From 1860 to 1914, the United States was transformed from a small, young, agricultural ex-colony to a huge, modem, industrial nation A debtor nation in I860, by 1914 it had become the world's wealthiest state, with a population that had more than doubled, rising from 31 million in 1860 to 76 million in 1900 By World War I, the United States had become a major world power As industrialization grew, so did alienation Characteristic American novels of the period Stephen Crane's Maggie: A Girl of the Streets, Jack London's Martin Eden, and later Theodore Dreiser's An American Tragedy depict the damage of economic forces and alienation on the weak or vulnerable individual Survivors, like Twain's Huck Finn, Humphrey Vanderveyden in London's The Sea-Wolf, and Dreiser's opportunistic Sister Carrie, endure through inner strength involving kindness, flexibility, and, above all, individuality MODFRNISM AND EXPERIMENTATION, 1914-1945 Many Historians have characterized the period between the two world wars as the United States' traumatic "coming of age," despite the fact that U.S direct involvement was relatively brief (1917-1918) and its casualties many fewer than those of its European allies and foes John Dos Passos expressed America's postwar disillusionment in the novel Three Soldiers (1921), when he noted that civilization was a "vast edifice of sham, and the war, instead of its crumbling, was its fullest and most ultimate expression." Shocked and permanently changed, Americans returned to their homeland but could never regain their innocence Nor could soldiers from rural America easily return to their roots After experiencing the world, many now yearned for a modem, urban life New farm machines such as planters, harvesters, and binders had drastically reduced the demand for farm jobs; yet despite their increased productivity, farmers were poor Crop prices, like urban workers' wages, depended on unrestrained market forces heavily influenced by business interests: Government subsidies for farmers and effective workers' unions had not yet become established "The chief business of the American people is business," President Calvin Coolidge proclaimed in 1925, and most agreed In the postwar "Big Boom," business flourished, and the successful prospered beyond their wildest dreams For the first time, many Americans enrolled - in higher education in the 1920s college enrollment doubled The middle-class prospered; Americans began to enjoy the world's highest national average income in this era, and many people purchased the ultimate status symbol - an automobile The typical urban American home glowed with electric lights and boasted a radio that connected the house with the outside world, and perhaps a telephone, a camera, a typewriter, or a sewing machine Like the businessman protagonist of Sinclair Lewis's novel Babbitt (1922), the average American approved of these machines because they were modem and because most were American inventions and American-made Americans of the "Roaring Twenties" fell in love with other modem entertainments Most people went to the movies once a week Although Prohibition – a nationwide ban on the production, transport, and sale of alcohol instituted through the 18th Amendment to the U.S Constitution - began in 1919, underground "speakeasies" and nightclubs proliferated, featuring jazz music, cocktails, and daring modes of dress and dance Dancing, moviegoing, automobile touring, and radio were national crazes American women, in particular, felt liberated Many had left farms and villages for homefront duty in American cities during World War I, and had become resolutely modem They cut their hair short ("bobbed"), wore short "flapper" dresses, and gloried in the right to vote assured by the 19th Amendment to the Constitution, passed in 1920 They boldly spoke their mind and took public roles in society Western youths were rebelling, angry and disillusioned with the savage war, the older generation they held responsible, and difficult postwar economic conditions that, ironically, allowed Americans with dollars - like writers F Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, and Ezra Pound to live abroad handsomely on very little money Intellectual currents, particularly Freudian psychology and to a lesser extent Marxism (like the earlier Darwinian theory of evolution), implied a "godless" world view and contributed to the breakdown of traditional values Americans abroad absorbed these views and brought them back to the United States where they took root, firing the imagination of young writers and artists William Faulkner, for example, a 20th-century American novelist, employed Freudian elements in all his works, as did virtually all serious American fiction writers after World War I Despite outward gaiety, modernity, and unparalleled material prosperity, young Americans of the 1920s were “the lost generation" - so named by literary portraitist Gertrude Stein Without a stable, traditional structure of values, the individual lost a sense of identity The secure, supportive family life; the familiar, settled community; the natural and eternal rhythms of nature that guide the planting and harvesting on a farm; the sustaining sense of patriotism; moral values inculcated by religious beliefs and observations - all seemed undermined by World War I and its aftermath Numerous novels, notably Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises (1926) and Fitzgerald's This Side of Paradise (1920), evoke the extravagance and disillusionment of the lost generation In T.S Eliot's influential long poem The Waste Land (1922), Western civilization is symbolized by a bleak desert in desperate need of ram (spiritual renewal) The world depression of the 1930s affected most of the population of the United States Workers lost their jobs, and factories shut down; businesses and banks failed; farmers, unable to harvest, transport, or sell their crops, could not pay their debts and lost their farms Midwestern droughts turned the "breadbasket" of America into a dust bowl Many farmers left the Midwest for California in search of jobs, as vividly described in John Steinbeck's Tire Grapes of Wrath (1939) At the peak of the Depression, one-third of all Americans were out of work Soup kitchens, shanty towns, and armies of hobos - unemployed men illegally riding freight trams - became part of national life Many saw the Depression as a punishment for sins of excessive materialism and loose living The dust storms that blackened the midwestem sky, they believed, constituted an Old Testament judgment: the "whirlwind by day and the darkness at noon." The Depression turned the world upside down The United States had preached a gospel of business in the 1920s; now, many Americans supported a more active role for government in the New Deal programs of President Franklin D Roosevelt Federal money created jobs in public works, conservation, and rural electrification Artists and intellectuals were paid to create murals and state handbooks These remedies helped, but only the industrial build-up of World War II renewed prosperity After Japan attacked the United States at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, disused shipyards and factories came to bustling life massproducing ships, airplanes, jeeps, and supplies War production and experimentation led to new technologies, including the nuclear bomb Witnessing the first experimental nuclear blast, Robert Oppenheimer, leader of an international team of nuclear scientists, prophetically quoted a Hindu poem: "I am become Death, the shatterer of worlds." Modernism The large cultural wave of Modernism, which gradually emerged in Europe and the United States in the early years of the 20th century, expressed a sense of modem life through art as a sharp break from the past, as well as from Western civilization's classical traditions Modern life seemed radically different from traditional life - more scientific, faster, more technological, and more mechanized Modernism embraced these changes In literature, Gertrude Stem (1874-1946) developed an analogue to modem art A resident of Paris and an art collector (she and her brother Leo purchased works of the artists Paul Czanne, Paul Gauguin, Pierre Auguste Renoir, Pablo Picasso, and many others), Stem once explained that she and Picasso were doing the same thing, he in art and she in writing Using simple, concrete words as counters, she developed an abstract, experimental prose poetry The childlike quality of Stein's simple vocabulary recalls the bright, primary colors of modem art, while her repetitions echo the repeated shapes of abstract visual compositions By dislocating grammar and punctuation/she achieved new "abstract" meanings as in her influential collection Tender Buttons (1914), which views objects from different angles, as in a cubist painting: A Table A Table means does it not my dear it means a whole steadiness Is it likely that a change A table means more than a glass even a looking glass is tall Meaning, in Stein's work, was often subordinated to technique, just as subject was less important than shape in abstract visual art Subject and technique became inseparable in both the visual and literary art of the period The idea of form as the equivalent of content, a cornerstone of post-World War II art and literature, crystallized in this period Technological innovation in the world of factories and machines inspired new attentiveness to technique in the arts To take one example: Light, particularly electrical light, fascinated modem artists and writers Posters and advertisements of the period are full of images of floodlit skyscrapers and light rays shooting out from automobile headlights, moviehouses, and watchtowers to illumine a forbidding outer darkness suggesting ignorance and old-fashioned tradition Photography began to assume the status of a fine art allied with the latest scientific developments The photographer Alfred Stieglitz opened a salon in New York City, and by 1908 he was showing the latest European works, including pieces by Picasso and other European friends of Gertrude Stein Stieglitz's salon influenced numerous writers and artists, including William Carlos Williams, who was one of the most influential American poets of the 20th century Williams cultivated a photographic clarity of image; his aesthetic dictum was "no ideas but in things." Vision and viewpoint became an essential aspect of the modernist novel as well No longer was it sufficient to write a straightforward third-person narrative or (worse yet) use a pointlessly intrusive narrator The way the story was told became as important as the story itself Henry James, William Faulkner, and many other American writers experimented with fictional points of view (some are still doing so) James often restricted the information in the novel to what a single character would have known Faulkner's novel The Sound and the Fury (1929) breaks up the narrative into four sections, each giving the viewpoint of a different character (including a mentally retarded boy) To analyze such modernist novels and poetry, a school of "new criticism" arose in the United States, with a new critical vocabulary New critics hunted the "epiphany" (moment in which a character suddenly sees the transcendent truth of a situation, a term derived from a holy saint's appearance to mortals); they "examined" and “clarified" a work, hoping to "shed light" upon it through their "insights." CONTENTS PREFACE INTRODUCTION TO LITERATURE INTERPRETATION HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE Major authors and works John Smith: The Pocahontas Incident from Autobiography Benjamin Franklin: Washington Irving: Sayings from Poor Richard's Almanack Rip Van Winkle Ralph Waldo Selections from Emerson Essays Emerson: Henry Wadsworth The Tide Rises, The Tide Falls Longfellow: Edgar Allan Poe: The Tell-Tale Heart Annabel Lee Emily Dickinson: A Word, I Never Saw a Moor, My Life Closed Twice, I'm Nobody, Some Keep the Sabbath, How Happy Is the Little Stone, If I Can Stop One Heart, The Bustle in a House, There Is No Frigate Like a Book, Success Is Counted Sweetest, The Sky Is Low, Faith Is a Fine Invention from The Mark Twain: Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Kate Chopin: O Henry: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer The Story of An Hour The Cop and The Anthem Robert Frost: Katherine Anne Porter: William Faulkner: Ernest Hemingway: Maureen Daly: The Pasture, The Road Not Taken, Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, Mending Wall, Putting in the Seed, Nothing Gold Can Stay Jilting of Granny Weatherall A Rose for Emily In Another Country A Clean, Well-Lighted Place Cat in the Rain Sixteen PERIODS OF LITERARY TRENDS IN AMERICAN LITERATURE Early American and colonial period to 1776 Democratic origins and revolutionary writers, 1776-1820 The romantic period 1820-1860: essayists and poets The rise of realism, 1860-1914 Modernism and experimentation, 1914-1945 -// VĂN HỌC MỸ AMERICAN LITERATURE Tác giả: LÊ THỊ THANH, Ph.D NHÀ XUẤT BẢN GIÁO DỤC Chịu trách nhiệm xuất bản: Chủ tịch HĐQT kiêm Tổng Giám đốc NGÔ TRẦN ÁI Phó Tổng Giám đốc kiêm Tổng biên tập NGUYỄN QUÝ THAO Chịu trách nhiệm nội dung: Giám đốc Chi nhánh NXBGD TP Cần Thơ ĐỖ TRUNG THƯỜNG Biên tập nội dung: KIM NGÂN Sửa in: HOÀNG LAN Chế bản: PHAN HUY ĐƠN VỊ LIÊN DOANH IN VÀ PHÁT HÀNH: CÔNG TY CP ĐẦU TƯ & PHÁT TRIỂN GIÁO DỤC PHƯƠNG NAM AMERICAN LITERATURE Mã số: PVK 16N7-CNC In 2.000 khổ 19 x 27cm CTy CP Cơ Khí Ngành In, 102A-B Hải Thượng Lãn Ông Quận 5, TP.HCM Số in: 15/GC số XB: 479-2007/CXB/40-1042/GD In xong nộp lưu chiểu tháng 09 năm 2007 ... or the middle as to what will happen at the end? HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE It took Americans many years to develop a national literature The settlers who arrived in the 1600’s had little... Thị Thanh, Ph.D INTRODUCTION TO LITERATURE INTERPRETATION Literature needs creative readers with effective strategies for reading and interpretation Students of literature are expected to express... masterpieces that ranked with the great works of literature throughout the world Since the 1800’s, American authors have made important contributions to all forms of literature Washington Irving and Edgar